Voting in Charlottesville

In the years I’ve been voting at Key Recreation Center on Market Street the procedure has changed as a result of popular mythology. Despite no known problem of people voting under false identity, one must now display an ID and tell the polling place attendant the name and address on it. This fixes a nonexistent problem called voter fraud.

And this week there was another change: No option to vote on a paper ballot. I was told that the Democrats had decided to save money by not having that option. But when I walked outside and mentioned it to city council member Bob Fenwick, he said the Republican registrar would have made that call. Regardless, it’s a decision nobody objects to because real, documented, and frequent problems with the completely unverifiable machines that one now must vote on do not concern people the way imaginary problems much talked about on television do.